The present invention relates to a refrigerator hinge assembly and a method for hanging a refrigerator door wherein the refrigerator door has a flexible door seal, wherein the door can be accurately positioned in a factory to a preset orientation, removed in the field, and reinstalled with precision to the preset orientation.
Conventionally, doors for refrigerator cabinets have door hinges which are slotted to allow for tolerance variation in the components for properly aligning the door and the door seal with the refrigerator cabinet in the factory. A loose tap plate is located beneath the cabinet "wrapper" or outer paneling and contains mounting holes to secure the hinge to the outside of the cabinet wrapper. Door hinge assemblies are shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,290,109 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,864,691.
When refrigerator doors are hung on a cabinet, an assembly fixture engages and sets the door to the factory specifications regarding the door seal. However, when the doors are removed in the field in order to deliver the product through narrow doorways of a typical home, the factory settings are lost and a field adjustment is required which is susceptible to inaccurate and imprecise door seal settings. A large service incident rate, for example, for side by side refrigerators is in door seal and alignment service calls.